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A transference of love
In this first collection, States of Mind
and Love, Riccobono provides readers with a fascinating
catalogue of similes, which stands for her dynamic and passionate
vision of the world. In the Author’s Note,
she introduces the idea of life as a journey through
“states” of mind, then, she brings in the notion of
living one’s life like dancing Tango, and
finally – quoting Baudelaire and Pessoa – she
compares poetic inspiration to a bunch of fragrant flowers, with each
flower blooming into a lyric poem.
Riccobono explains the impacts of this mandatory journey on the way she
dances, writes, and works, as well as on the way she loves. She
compares writing poetry to a choice she makes each day to offer a
response to the most significant challenges she must face on a daily
basis. By means of poetry, dancing and travel, humans may attain peace:
peace is harmony, and harmony is perfection achieved through both
motion and aesthetic contemplation. Peace corresponds with the ability
to reach the very core of poetic awareness, where life may find new,
substantial forms of energy.
When poetic language returns to its source, its energy too is recycled
and amalgamated into the cosmos, as in the idea of an Anima
Mundi, reconciling all that exists. Gracefulness and harmony
is attainable through intuitive thinking, there where poetry blossoms
into hope, joy, sadness, desire, or reverie, with each flower
possessing its unique scent. These flowers make clear their non-verbal
‘languages’, which everybody can understand and
learn. Whereas the poems deal with the practical use of these
non-verbal forms of communication, introducing a rich variety of themes
and contexts, allowing readers to become familiar with the
poet’s life style, the Author’s note
speaks of how we can approach this volume on a more theoretical ground.
Some of the poems here included, such as ‘4,378 Miles to
go’, ‘Ireland-Bound’,
‘Post-modern Holland’, deal with departures,
whether from home, dance-floors, stations, airports, relationships, or
mental states, as in ‘ To K, his Legend’:
And so you dance: out of your
scapulae
wings are born that lift you
high
on the stage, allow you to
skim the floor
without falling, but even so
it’s improvised.
Wings that make you travel
slow motion, light
speed to that internal space
where you are free –
like me, here, while I write.
Wings similar to dancing limbs suggest the need to re-signify
one’s life and move forward to an understanding of
one’s true potentials. In another poem,
‘Post-modern Holland’, we find the idea of life as
a minimalist, circular journey:
During that tedious talk in
Antwerp,
as Sebastian was preparing
his speech for later, and the
after
lunch hour was much heavier
than we hoped, a yellow
butterfly
came in through the window and
danced
light circles around us.
‘Thank you for your
attention’
We clapped our hands.
The butterfly’s circles create marvel and knowledge for the
viewers caught in the insect’s delicate center of energy,
which suddenly takes them up into a change of consciousness, allowing
insight into what is happening around them. The butterfly, in the
author’s eyes, follows a metaphoric trajectory to seize and
embody life’s rhythms. The imagery shows that the poet has
herself hung out with these rhythms long enough to catch, both
physically and intellectually, their intimate beat. The closing line,
‘We clapped our hands’, underscores a moment
evoking a perishable beauty, as it is frequently the case in this
collection.
All together, these poems enact – sometimes ironically
– forms of transition. As ‘departures’,
they imply regeneration. The idea of a journey into different
‘states of mind’ becomes itself a metaphor for the
poet’s experience of self-awareness. Certainly,
Riccobono’s voice, which uses English as a foreign language,
offers a counter-narrative to the long tradition of how a
woman’s life as mother, lover and intellectual is considered,
making readers aware that, although life has boundaries, there is
always some further work to be done, action to be attempted to (re)gain
autonomy, as in ‘Insomnia’, where Riccobono reveals
deliberately the dynamics of her character, in a self-regulating moment
of introspection:
Her
new thoughts were turning her on, yet she was relaxed, she had to plan
on to the detail, but not too quickly. She needed time to fit in every
single idea, to put some order in her mind that had been awoken to the
point of no return-so many thoughts in so few hours. She had to learn
to wait for the right time, as she was sewing her plan together.
[…] No-one would order her any longer, no-one would impose
anything from now on.
Always witty and emotionally subtle, Riccobono’s style
embraces the many ways imagination can move ahead to prevent the
artist’s practical life to be carried along with unwanted
circumstances. Travelling, dancing and writing symbolize her vital need
to continue her life journey optimistically, allowing her talent to
recharge itself and move each time to new ‘states of
mind’.
If setting one’s mind to writing poetry is a departure from
that existential enclosure that prevents the free expression of
one’s true feelings, then the way this book’s four
sections flow into each other perfectly illustrate how Rossella
Riccobono has imagined her poetry, attuning it to the kind of discourse
that Julia Kristeva has called a ‘transference of
love’.
Erminia Passannanti
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* * *
Tattoo
Accept this final message
written in black ink on my ankle,
over the same space where a sand fly
bit me last year. It didn’t hurt
that much – expectation
was more painful, atrocious.
It’s Arabic, lacey, still soaked
with solar heat, the same
that scorched my skin
when I, without suspecting
you existed – yet I knew your eyes
in many a dream – visited Oman,
Nizwa, Muscat, bright
heatherless Scottish hills,
only no rain, no clouds.
If it can’t be love, let it be
friendship. Habib. A word.
But on my skin, permanent
symbol, engraved –
friend warrior lover miracle perdition.
It’s a gift.
Wellington, September 2003
* * *
4,378 Miles to Go
How shall we employ
the eternal enemy, time,
that sounds as always,
inexorably short before my choice
is made: 12 hours and I shall be yours.
‘Your name won’t come up
on the computer screen, m’am.’
Perhaps a variable route
opens its door to me.
‘You were on the 10.30 to Auckland
this morning.’
Perhaps the destiny arrow
will point to a different direction –
the compass is spinning fast.
Perhaps I won’t be yours at all.
‘You’re lucky m’am, there is
one more seat. You’re on!’
Lucky is a debatable word.
Wellington, July 2003
* * *
7 Flights in 6 Days
I M U S T F L Y A G A I N
C O N F U S I O N
O F H O U R D A Y Y E A R
W H E R E A M I ?
I’M
S T I R
D A M N
On a KLM Airline plane, July 2003
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